Today is the 5th year anniversary of my blog! I have been writing and sharing online for the past five years and I want to thank everyone who has read even a sentence.
This blog post is about living with friend anxiety.
If you know me in real life, you have probably have heard me talk about how I had a girl gang when I was in elementary school. We were 15 girls in a class of 40, and I realized early on, I needed to seize the power, the popularity, and the reins in the class if I wanted to be happy. I was an only child; you can’t blame me.
In first grade, I was chosen class president, and this was only second week of school. So you can see, I was an influencer+ before LinkedIn was even conceived. To be fair to my younger self, I was a notorious boy-hater but I always loved, valued, and supported all my girl friends. When you’re outnumbered, you don’t have time to put down other girls. You gotta build them up, like an army.
And that’s kind of what I did. During recess and PE, the girls and I would go to a pre-determined corner of the schoolyard and have boot camp. I was a benevolent dictator – they didn’t get to play hopscotch and tag whenever they wanted, but they built stamina, strategy, and scheming wits while I trained them.
Where did I get my training? Books and movies. As they say, you have to learn from other people’s mistakes, not your own. In any case, the moral of this prelude is that:
- I had a lot of friends that I loved who loved me back (loved and feared for some, but loved for the most part)
- I had them all throughout elementary school!
Fast forward to me starting 6th grade in a foreign country, a foreign school, and basically no friends whatsoever.
Before I get into a more dramatic retelling of this story, let me just say, when you go from class-president-for-five-years-in-a-row to newcomer-with-no-friends-or-english your entire personality and sense of self takes a hit.
Anyway, we all know middle school is hell, unless you’re a bully. If you’re a bully, your life is hell which is why you’re acting out, but your life in school isn’t hell. It’s actually quite bearable. I was not a bully. I was also not ready to be bullied (I don’t think anyone is but all I am saying is – I had never been bullied before).
And not just bullied, but bullied by GIRLS? The very people I trusted? People I thought were supposed to be by my side while we conspired against boys?
Alas – how the tables had turned. Girls were mean to me, and why? BECAUSE OF BOYS?
Can you believe this?
So, naturally, I started doubting everything I knew and entered into a weird state of depression and self-loathing which still remains with me today, albeit faded now, but still there.
By the end of my three-year middle school career, I emerged as a misanthropic and self-doubting girl of a human being, who was extremely insecure and unable to trust anyone and had no close friends whatsoever.
Deeper into the well of misery we go:
High school could have been a remedy. I was emotionally closed off for an entire year, but I did end up making a few really great friends. I thought I was back in my element, ready to ride the waves, and rise, like a second coming of Nur Banu.
I was shut down pretty quickly though, perhaps a divine chastisement. During senior year, my two best friends ditched me. And by ditch I mean: they found –what I considered at the time – better people than me, and thus disposed of me since I no longer served any function.
This is a terrible to mindset to ever have, and I wouldn’t wish it upon my worst enemies. But here were the repercussions. I thought:
- that I was easily disposable
- that my friends could cut me out of their lives without explanation
- that I didn’t even deserve an explanation
- that, because there were no warning signs, this could happen to me pretty much with any friendship anywhere at anytime
- that I had no inherently good qualities that made me a desirable friend
So, this is how I come to college. And college isn’t easy. If you’ve seen some of what I have posted before, you’ve seen that I’ve been struggling with having security in my friendships.
Last week I realized why (as I was talking to my psychologist).
I used to see myself as a constant before, but for a long time, I hadn’t. I was just floating in a void and begging for people to think of me as a friend so that I could see some value in myself.
Being your own constant means, you are like a planet in your own orbit. Or a star journeying across space. And every other person in your life is also a planet or a star: they come in and out of your range. Or maybe they are like a comet, they speed past you once and leave a trail of light behind. Either way, you are ultimately an entity by yourself. Dynamic and changing, and always in motion, but a source of your own light and luminosity.
And together, you have systems and galaxies and they are all analogies for cosmic friendships and cosmic families.
Just cosmic love. If we can harness it.
PS: My best friends and I are back to being best friends. Turns out they were having bad times and they regret ditching me. Which is nice I guess. Forgiven, but not forgotten.
Lots of raindrops,
Belle